Posted
by
Zonkon Monday February 19, 2007 @07:03AM
from the dirty-pool-riaa-dirty-pool dept.

cancan writes "The NY times is carrying an article about how the RIAA is hiring hip hop artists to make mix tapes, and then
helping the police raid their studios. In the case of DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon, they were raided by SWAT teams with their guns drawn. The local police chief said later that they were 'prepared for the worst.' Men in RIAA jackets helped cart away 'evidence'. Just the same, 'Record labels regularly hire mixtape D.J.'s to produce CDs featuring a specific artist. In many cases, these arrangements are conducted with a wink and a nod rather than with a contract; the label doesn't officially grant the D.J. the right to distribute the artist's songs or formally allow the artist to record work outside of his contract.' " This is more of the shenanigans that we've previously discussed on the site.

This is an old policy. Frank Zappa was commissioned by some pig or other to do some sex tapes - get a girl and record heavy breathing, simulated sex etc - then busted him for breaching obscenity laws. I think it's because the police are so on top of all the other laws, and have little else to do. Also, they're less likely to get their asses kicked by a bunch of musicians.

My initial impression: Entrapment
And since when does the RIAA get to act like feds and be part of a raid? The boundaries of law enforcement between the record industry seem to be heavily blurred if this is happening. Sounds like the RIAA wants to do a little too much CSI role playing in these setups. I'm imagining little numbered paper tents on tape reels, ziplock bags with drink straws and beer caps, carbon dust on mixing console faders, etc. This is a ridiculous waste of time and money. Who pays for this? Is this tax payer money being thrown at the desire to feel badass in a dark blue jacket with yellow letters on the back? All for the sake of abolishing the spread of entertainment. so. over. it. GET A NEW HOBBY.

Of course, if these hip-hop artists are really "gangstas" and are as hard as they claim, they will be gunning down RIAA executives in the street. But then they would get real jail sentences instead of some cooked-up publicity that makes them look tough without really hurting them, and they would lose the huge income that they get from playing along with the system they claim to despise. So they're not going to do that, are they?

Are you unable to think beyond your own tiny sense of self? Speed cameras aren't just put up as a revenue earner, or to piss you off. The pen pushers that make these choices do so do because, and you may find this surprising, they are thinking about preservation of not only your life, but the safety of millions of other people just like you. No fun to have someone you love killed because some retard wants to get home 2 seconds quicker.

Condoning violence is stupid. Being violent is equally as moronic. (Ex military, so I'd like to think I have a clue)

"If you want to get somewhere one light faster, leave the house earlier." --Gallagher"

Leaving the house earlier doesn't get you anywhere faster - it gets you there earlier; you're still going to travel the same amount of distance in the same amount of time. Also, are we really quoting Gallagher now? Come on...

"If you want to get somewhere one light faster, leave the house earlier." --Gallagher"

Leaving the house earlier doesn't get you anywhere faster - it gets you there earlier; you're still going to travel the same amount of distance in the same amount of time. Also, are we really quoting Gallagher now? Come on...

Way Back When, before Netflix, Blockbuster, and DVDs, I worked in a video rental shop near where Gallagher had his silly hippy ranch. One day, Gallagher came in and rented two of his own concert videos. When he came up to the counter to check out, my coworker picked up the tapes, looked at the titles and grimaced, saying "Wow, nobody rents these" (which was true). Gallagher said nothing, but only signed the receipt and stormed angrily out the door. To this day I thank my lucky stars I was on hand to witness that.

Way Back When, before Netflix, Blockbuster, and DVDs, I worked in a video rental shop near where Gallagher had his silly hippy ranch. One day, Gallagher came in and rented two of his own concert videos. When he came up to the counter to check out, my coworker picked up the tapes, looked at the titles and grimaced, saying "Wow, nobody rents these" (which was true). Gallagher said nothing, but only signed the receipt and stormed angrily out the door.

The OP didn't say that the coworker recognized Gallagher. If he did, it was rather rude; if he didn't, it's just a funny coincidence.

Working at a video store and telling a customer that no one ever rents these movies implies that the customer is an oddity and has very crappy tastes. Yeah, I'd say it's rude.

If I flipped off a blind man, and everyone around laughed, but no one made a remark -- Would the blind man be hurt? Would it still be rude? You might consider not the consequences of an action, but the motivation for doing so. You then might find that maybe people do things that hurt others by accident. And sometimes harmless actions are manifested by sinister motives. It's not as black and white as She didn't know who he was, so no it wasn't rude. Gallagher was still hurt, regardless if the co-worker realized her harm.

Speed cameras aren't just put up as a revenue earner, or to piss you off

I'm guessing you don't drive in the UK. Some of them are quite definitely put up for no reason
other than as revenue earners. I can think of one road near where I live that's 40mph one side
of a roundabout, and then 30mph on the other. No good reason for it. It's a nice wide road on
both sides, no new hazards to justify the change in speed limit.

But they have speed cams, and that earns revenue. You'd almost think they were deliber

The post you responded to was inaccurate in that it was too generalising. Over here in Germany, for example, the police often put up blatant traffic cameras on notorious stretches, those which have suffered a high amount of accidents. After a week or two the revenues earned goes down dramatically, but so does the amount of accidents. Since the lost revenue is less then the increased expense of responding to an accident (not to mention the intangible price of a human life!), the planners leave that road on h

Ok...I say then, just to prove it, let's take the revenue stream earned by speed cameras AND just old fashioned radar and manual police enforcement out of the picture. Lets fix the laws, and instead of giving the fines generated by this to the cops...lets redistribute those out to all those in the community that did NOT get a traffic infraction that year.

I guarantee, that if the cops did not earn a single penny from all the speed traps and traffic enforcement...if they did not have quotas to meet monthly, you'd see a severe drop off in the number of these setups. I think the cops would move on to other policing activities.

Down here in New Orleans, post Katrina, we're having a huge surge in crime....robberies, murder, etc.

I think our city would be much better served by having the cops channel their activities into more serious crime prevention, patrols and the like...rather than trying to earn money by giving out traffic citations. I'm not much worried about John Q. Citizen speeding to get to work on time to earn a living and pay taxes. I'm much more concerned about the thugs driving around 5 mph through neighborhoods, casing places to rob, or looking for a rival gang member to perform a drive-by-shooting on...

I guarantee, that if the cops did not earn a single penny from all the speed traps and traffic enforcement...if they did not have quotas to meet monthly, you'd see a severe drop off in the number of these setups. I think the cops would move on to other policing activities.

You contradict yourself. Speed cameras (at least the permanently installed variety) do not use police resources. They save police resources. There aren't enough police to physically patrol the roads, considering how many cars there are, and how many speeders there are.

I think our city would be much better served by having the cops channel their activities into more serious crime prevention,

This is exactly what speed cameras enable. You don't need a cop operating them, the cop can go and pursue robberies and murders. You also make a mistake when you claim speeding is not a serious crime. It is very serious. Most robberies don

You have no understanding how local gov works. You have no understanding of human factors engineering. You have no understanding of minima functions and loss functions. What's worse, you're a statist because you think pen-pushers should have the authority to release draconian systems like this on the public. Maybe you should learn a little about the freedom your military service was defending?

Definitely. My favorite is when they try to stop radio stations broadcasting locations. Unfortunately, they had no real answer to the "But if we tell people where they are, they'll slow down, that's what you want, right? Not the fine? Right?" paradox.

Mind you, they can be sneaky too. In Victoria, though completely forbidden by the act, I've seen cars on the side of the road, hazard lights blinking, hood up, and the camera gear perched atop the engine, so it's completely hidden - usually there's a telltale flash lamp on the ground just in front of the car.

when the light had gone through a complete cycle and still did not change for the waiting traffic

Makes no sense. Was it a complete cycle or wasn't it? Or was it a complete cycle but ignoring you? If it's traffic triggered, look on the road, near the lines. You'll see a thin black square, about the size of a car. Make sure your vehicle is over it.

the speed and driver's skill were not unsafe for the conditions

Given how horribly I see people handle rain on the road in Seattle, quite frankly, I'd rather not

This happens when your government supports the profits of the corporations over the rights of the citizens. Mussolini called it "corporatism" but that moniker didn't really take off so we're left with just plain old fashioned "Fascism".

This is truly what Fascism is, the binding together of corporate and governmental power. The corporations prosper and the power of their capital is fused with the power of the state to govern. Viewing fascism as corporations serving the government is only half of the story, the other half is that that power of the state is made available to corporations. This is almost a textbook example of the latter.

Unfortunately, the tax-exempt organization has become so enmeshed with government it has nearly become a formal government agency. MADD gets millions of dollars in federal and state funding, and has a quasi-official relationship with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In some jurisdictions, DWI defendants are sentenced to attend and pay for alcoholic-recovery groups sponsored by MADD. In many cities, MADD officials are even allowed to man sobriety checkpoints alongside police.

Who pays for this? Is this tax payer money being thrown at the desire to feel badass in a dark blue jacket with yellow letters on the back?

They were arrested on RICO charges which is one of the most abused laws in the nation. RICO allows for the immediate confiscation and auction of the property of the accused. It was originally used against the mob and later applied to drug dealers. The idea is to prevent them from using "ill-gotten gains" to fund their defense. So things like houses, cars, money in the bank, and other valuable property is sold at auction with the proceeds going to the state to fund further raids like these. In short, the DJ's paid for their own raid.

With RIAA joining in on the raid and getting the cops and the SWAT team to do their bidding doesn't it start to sound like the RIAA is an agent of the state? Or, more likely, the state is an agent of the RIAA?

As far as the first question, were they likely to commit their alleged crimes without RIAA inducement? Who knows...

Co-operating with the government doesn't make you an agent of the state.

It's really a legal gray area, but it's still legal.

Another example of this is employer drug testing. In Ohio where I live, the state government gives a kickback to companies that drug screen their employees, in the form of reduced Workmans Comp premiums. Often DRAMATICALLY reduced. In this particular case, the State could never drug test people. So they enlist a willing partner.

In this particular case, the police aren't working for the RIAA, as you claim. They are merely doing their job. A crime has been reported by a reputable investigator (yes, reputable could be argued, especially here, but work with me..) and the state is right to respond.

Consider the scenario where a shoplifter is detained by store security (a reputable investigator) and when the police arrive, they take them into custody. Very similar.

The sneaky part is that the RIAA is hiring these guys to break the law. Yes, that's sneaky, but it's entirely legal.

And I contend that it only looks as bad as it does because it's the RIAA doing it. An infamous villan.

Consider this: What if, say, Apple (cause everyone LOVES apple) discovered a factory in the US that would make counterfeits. So they represent themselves as "investors" and contact this factory and ask them to make a counterfeit iPod. The company agrees. During production, Apple contacts the authorities, and has the plant shut down. I doubt many slashdotters would be crying about such a scenario, and it's very analogous to what's happening here.

The sneaky part is that the RIAA is hiring these guys to break the law. Yes, that's sneaky, but it's entirely legal.

If the RIAA is knowingly hiring them to break the law, that is certainly not legal. If it hired them to "break" copyright on its holdings, then it's probably also implicitly given them license to do so. However, if these agreements were arranged with a "wink and a nod" as stated, it's going to be pretty easy for them to weasel out of it.

...
The sneaky part is that the RIAA is hiring these guys to break the law. Yes, that's sneaky, but it's entirely legal.

...

Not quite legal, its called "Solicitation". You are asking someone to do something illegal. Same as if they posed as Johns asking under-cover officers for "services". They would be arrested for soliciting the officer for those services. The officer gets away un-charged, as they have a clear conscience in the eyes of the law: they have no intent to actually perform the illegal activity as they are officers of the law itself. In this case, the RIAA is more like someone acting like an undercover cop, solici

Well, if we're going to drill the fact that copyright infringement isn't theft, then we might as well also drill the fact that entrapment can only be done by members of the State (e.g. if a policeman is selling drugs undercover and approaches you with an offer and you buy).

If we are going to drill down to the facts, then lets get thing right, shall we? Entrapment can also take place if done by an agent of the state. In other words, a policeman cannot avoid a claim of entrapment by asking someone else to g

What other laws are the "police" on top of? According to CNN Money [http://money.cnn.com/], Atlanta, GA, is listed as having a personal crime rate FIVE times the national average - and the "police" (Influenced by the RIAA) have the time and resources to bust people for selling unlicensed MIXES? It looks like some organizations need to have their priorities straightened, and perhaps that involves ignoring the RIAA when it comes calling for an entire SWAT team. "Guns drawn"? "Prepared for the worst"? What wer

Lets say for example, me a married white male happened to be burning/selling cds at my house. Do you think they would send a swat team with guns drawn or Briscoe and Greene types who will make wisecracks and maybe pursuade the da to indict me sometime in the next five months?

No. The TSA reserves the right to perform that kind of stupidity at airport security checkpoints.

Not as far as I can see from the article; the Slashdot summary seems misleading. As far as I can see from the article the RIAA had somebody busted that they had previously employed on a different project. I can't find anything in the linked article to suggest the set-up that the Slashdot article implies. Surely the RIAA does enough scummy things that we don't have to make things up about them?

Misleading, but still pretty shitty. On one hand, RIAA enjoyed the fame and quality of work of those guys enough to seek them out and employ them. Then they turned around and punched them in the face, as if to say, "We don't care if you make mixes if you're a nobody, but if you ever become famous enough for us to hire you once, you aren't allowed to do any more work in the field unless we're paying you to do it."

I completely agree. However, the RIAA did do something scummy: they're leaving BestBuy and other distributors be, free to continue selling the same CD's. Also, previously the DJ's felt that there was sort of a "you help us, we won't go after you" feeling towards the whole deal, that is no longer present.

Off topic: my favorite part of the article was when one of the rappers interviewed said he didn't support mixtapes, by which he meant he bought and listened to them (of course) but didn't like it when his material was used. It seems to me that it's greed and hypocrisy like this that permeates the RIAA and major labels. I guess that's normal for capitalism, and why I'm all for creating laws that protect citizens from the corporations as much as we have them to protect us from the government.

The government passes laws designed to protect corporations from people.
Some corporations abuse these laws to make a larger profit (why not? it's legal!).
People demand more laws to protect themselves from the corporations.

Somehow, I think I can see which groups are benefiting here. Not people or corporations, and certainly not small business.

The "scummy business" the RIAA did was to hire DJs to do mixtapes for an artist that they were trying to promote and then at some later date sicced the SWAT guys on them. Maybe the artist didn't do so well.

In other words, the DJ's operation was legal enough for them when it suited their purposes, but required an armed SWAT team after they decided he was no longer useful. In my world view, that's plenty scummy.

The underlying story actually makes more sense if you understand that the RIAA is not the recording industry, but a group that represents them, and that in all likelihood the probability that the story's claim that the RIAA "hired" any hip-hop artists to do anything at all is pretty close to zero.

This is more like Microsoft hiring some programmers to produce some kind of installation CD with a variety of applications, much of which is not from Microsoft, and then the BSA busting them for piracy. Yes, Microsoft is a member of the BSA, but that doesn't mean the BSA has much to do with the day-to-day decision making processes at Microsoft or vice-versa.

On the face of it, an article about the BSA raiding a company started by Microsoft wouldn't generate the same kind of Slashdot reactions. We might be amazed Microsoft ever started such a company, but we wouldn't think this was some kind of wierd "entrapment" thing.

Unfortunately, it remains the case that Slashdot seriously believes that the RIAA is a massive, monopolistic, music publisher as opposed to an industry group that represents publishers. Slashdot has, judging from the headline, gone beyond merely repeating this nonsense and now actually believes it.

I don't see anything in the article about them being hired then being busted for doing the thing they were hired to do.

Seems to me they had been hired once, but that wasn't anything to do with the raid.Mind you, the raid itself seemed a bit extreme.They found none of the stuff that made them think they should go in armed. Still, I don't know what percentage of raids of this type do turn up arms/drugs, or how many they have to do, the gun toting could simply be policy.

The suppresion of semi ligitimate music outlets is all part of the RIAAs remit, so this shouldn't be surprising. They aren't defenders of law, they are defenders of a business model, and have worked to change laws to protect that business model.

Mind you, the raid itself seemed a bit extreme.They found none of the stuff that made them think they should go in armed. Still, I don't know what percentage of raids of this type do turn up arms/drugs, or how many they have to do, the gun toting could simply be policy.

I hate to use a phrase from the Iraq War, but it fits. It's "shock and awe" tacticts. Despite what Slashdotters want to believe, the DJs are bootleggers. This article stated that it found 25,000 CDs. A previous article I believe put that number at 75,000. Folks, this is an organized bootleg operation that got shut down. Going in armed is typical of this type of operation to shut down bootleggers. They do it to try to send a message of fear to other people who might be involved in the same thing.

"Mixtapes also feature unreleased songs, often "leaked" to the D.J. by a record label that wants to test an artist's popularity or build hype for a coming album release. Record labels regularly hire mixtape D.J.'s to produce CDs featuring a specific artist."

"...when label employees send [mix DJs] tracks to include on his mixtapes, they request a copy of the mixtape so that they can show their bosses the track is "getting spin from the

It seems fairly obvious to me. Rap stars need to have "street cred" in order to rise into the upper echelons of rap stardom. That means a criminal record. Say you were a unscrupulous record producer who had a hot new talent on his hands. Say that the talent happens to be a squeaky clean wannabe thug from the 'burbs. Once your man has recorded a record all you have to do is plant some evidence/drugs and make an anonymous phone-call. Heck, if you're lucky those cops might be the trigger happy sort and you'll wind up with the next Tupac on your hands. (Not to mention the fact that your "client"'s contract probably cedes all royalties to the record company upon death...)

It sounds far-fetched, I know. However, one really does have to wonder if the majority of hardened criminals driving the rap industry are actually the sort that wears three-piece suits.

<Batty> Euch, rap is just missing one letter. c.<zeep> rapc?<Batty>...<Batty> Crap you idiot. you put the c on the other end<zeep> oic<Batty> Though you could also say it's missing an e<zeep> wtf is erap?* Batty bangs his head repeatedly against a wall

D.J.'s. Pimp C told me that because there is no paper trail, mixtape D.J.'s are able to invent sales figures, and they routinely claim that, after their overhead, they just break even.

It reminds me of something....

Winston Groom's price for the screenplay rights to his novel Forrest Gump included a share of the profits; however, due to Hollywood accounting, the film's commercial success was converted into a net loss, and Groom received nothing. As such, he has refused to sell the screenplay rights to the novel's sequel, stating that he cannot in good conscience allow money to be wasted on a failure.

Seems they also use Hollywood Accounting [wikipedia.org].Be carefull, next time it's gonna be a MPAA bust, afterall DJ's are using hollywood's trade secret !

I wonder how much longer Hollywood Accounting will be allowed to continue. You would think that somebody trying to make a name for themselves by going after "the next Enron" would find Hollywood a soft target.

shot of a grave-looking police officer saying, "In this case we didn't find drugs or weapons, but it's not uncommon for us to find other contraband."

Or to put it another way, these people are completely innocent of all crimes related to drugs or weapons. Of course, by putting it this way, there's a clear implication that these people are somehow connected to the illegal drugs trade.

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.

Yes, this is a seperate mixtape apart from the agreed upon earlier releases. Depending on who those DJs deal with, they may have just figured they would do another mixtape, then discovered (with guns pointed in their faces) that that was not part of the agreement.

As something of a fan of hip hop, it's kind of scary to see that the RIAA is going to clamp down on mixtapes. mixtapes are where trends start. It's a vital part of the cycle of hip hop production.

If producers, rappers and DJs don't have the freedom of the mixtape to test-market beats or styles or even simply as a means to promote themselves or their labels, this is going to hurt hip hop on the national level. And it will drive money away from the RIAA, which is the opposite goal of the RIAA (at least, I think it is- it's hard to tell these days).

That's the problem. In terms of the law, it doesn't really matter if the mix tapes are advertisement. Using large pieces of any single copyrighted item without the copyright owner's permission is infringement. Maybe if a mix tape contains no more than seconds of any given artist's work, they might be considered some odd twist of a "review" under fair use, but that's up to judician interpretation. Maybe if the labels weren't so rigid about their licencing, it wouldn't be a problem. Back when I used to p

There's a strong school of thought that says that piracy in general is a huge driving force behind music and movie purchases. In other words, people a) purchase content so they can share them with their friends, which they otherwise wouldn't purchase, and b) people download or otherwise pirate content to "try it out" and are afterwards happy enough to purchase the real thing.This line of reasoning would suggest that all of the RIAA/MPAA's attacks on file sharing, use of DRM, etc, is harmful to their own ind

So, one of the things I glean from this article is that the RIAA pays artists to make mixtapes, encouraging them to violate copyright laws? Nobody else is shocked by this? Especially amazing is the Mafia-like behavior surrounding it, secret agreements, payment under the table, etc. I thought things like that were only done in the movies, and even then not by self-styled "respectable" organizations like the RIAA.

There isn't even mention that the RIAA hired *these* same DJs.Even if so, they do not say the projects for which this happened were RIAA sanctioned, explicitly or implicitly.

I think the leap of logic made is that RIAA sanctions this sort of activity, therefore it is hypocritical to punish it. The problem for them is that a DJ is, without their permission, and by extension without RIAA getting money for it, is duplicating and manipulating works that they have ownership rights of. Reproducing them and manip

So these guys are now behaving like law enforcement agencies, going in with RIAA jackets and so forth? Their importance is way overblown. They're acting like ATF agents. What's next? Will they burn down a compound?

The routine use of paramilitary police raids for nonviolent offenders gets people killed [cato.org] on a routine basis. Three cops are now on trial for murder in Atlanta because they raided a house, killed an innocent old lady, and then lied after the fact to establish a bogus justification for the warrant. Police in Virginia raided a dentist's [justiceforsal.com] house for records related to illegal gambling, and one of the cops violated the two first laws of firearms safety and shot him dead when he tripped with his fucking finger on the trigger.

The steady flow of federal dollars for "homeland security" has exacerbated a problem which was started by the War on Some Drugs: incompetent, ill-trained paramilitary police forces who are both encouraged to "prepare for the worst" and given access to powerful weaponry. The result is a bunch of corpses. Corpses of innocent people, non-violent offenders, and even cops. The nature of unannounced no-known raids turns non-violent, low-stress situations into violent and stressful ones, with predictable results. In many of these cases (like the aforementioned dentist), regular cops showing up, knocking on the door, and serving a warrant, would be sufficient to perform the desired search. But when a dozen cops burst through the door with guns drawn, people get killed.

The RIAA instigates enough of these raids, the RIAA are going to kill someone. For copyright violation. It's just a matter of time.

In the dentists [washingtonpost.com] case, it looks like the county routinely uses SWAT teams for search warrants. In any case, the officer that shot Mr. Culosi was a 17 year veteran, so his carelessness should get him charged with negligent homicide rather than manslaughter.

On Page 5 of the article, there's a wonderful summary of the situation:

The economics of mixtapes appeal to XL, and so do their politics; as he sees it, mixtapes undermine the power of major record labels and radio stations. "Most artists can't afford to get their music on the radio, but an artist has the right to let his fan base hear what he's done," XL said. "Who is the label to dictate how to feed the fan base?"

It's all about control. The RIAA's mission is about controlling the distribution channel. These individuals had gotten successful enough that they became a credible threat. The RIAA can't allow them to continue being successful. So the RIAA sent a rather thuggish message...

The truely disturbing element of all this is that the law enforcement folks allowed the RIAA representatives to play a pseudo-law-enforcement role. The defense attorneys should petition to discard all evidence that's come in contact with the RIAA representatives. At a minimum, the evidenciary chain of custody has been broken. The RIAA has a substantial interest in the outcome of the case, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the evidence. Law Enforcement officers are specially trained to be impartial. They're directly accountable through the courts. They're held to a higher standard. They're an element of "due process." The RIAA is none of these (though they pretend to be law enforcement on TV.)

The RIAA homepage needs to be slashdotted, repeatedly, and with no end in sight.

Is this a joke? Somehow I don't think a bunch of nerds throwing packets at the RIAA website is going to help anyone. They're an organisation that deals with other *big* organisations who they already have other communication channels with. They don't need a fucking website. Get real.

Taking up arms against them is also a ridiculously extreme idea. If you want to help remove the RIAA's power, here's a few ideas:

- Learn a musical instrument and join the free culture movement.

- Get a law degree and help out in legal battles against RIAA and any organisation (MPAA, patent trolls, etc.) doing similar things.

- Start an alternative RIAA that protects artists of copylefted music from distributors using DRM on their copylefted music. Sue the DRM distributors for the maximum amount.

- If you feel strongly enough to dedicate a few thousand dollars of your own, launch a copylefted media competition and make the thousands of dollars the prize for the best copylefted film/song/etc. (online film festival, music website, etc.)

The problem with "free" and "copylefted" music is that it's usually pretty terrible, and most of the time it's just "make your own techno" which gets boring after a while.I am a big fan of alternative, heavy metal, and melodic rock, and I never see anything like that out there as "copyleft." These people are either long gone, desperate for cash, or in the case of melodic rock, releasing only one or two songs for free.

My sister's "emo" bands are more download-friendly, she tells me, always telling people at

And the number one way to stop the RIAA is to stop buying music. Put your money where your mouth is and enjoy the music you already have or enjoy the music you or your friends make. If enough of us stop giving the RIAA our money they'll disappear. Of course, breaking out the weapons cache sounds exciting too but I'd rather fight over something more (much more) important.

Unless you are Cher or Elton John, you are not going to do well with the current copyright situation. You'll see your music sell a million albums and yet make a mysteriously small amount of money.

This is the meat but it goes into quite a bit of detail.

From the article:

Last year the worldwide sales of all 600 or so members of the Recording Industry Association of America totaled $14.5 billion--a bit less than, say, the annual revenues of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. As for the tiny labels at South by Southwest, many of the dot-coms in attendance could have bought them outright for petty cash.

After the show I asked Cleaver if he was concerned about the fate of the music industry in the Internet age. "You must be kidding," he said. With some resignation he recounted the sneaky methods by which three record labels had ripped off the band or consigned its music to oblivion, a subject to which he has devoted several chapters of an unpublished autobiography he offered to send me.

(He had nicer things to say about his current label, Checkered Past.) Later I asked one of the music critics if Cleaver's tales of corporate malfeasance were true. More than true, I was told--they were typical. Not only is the total income from music copyright small, but individual musicians receive even less of the total than one would imagine. "It's relatively mild," Cleaver said later, "the screwing by Napster compared with the regular screwing."

Although many musicians resent it when people download their music free, most of them don't lose much money from the practice, because they earn so little from copyright. "Clearly, copyright can generate a huge amount of money for those people who write songs that become mass sellers," says Simon Frith, a rock scholar in the film-and-media department at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, and the editor of Music and Copyright (1993). But most musicians don't write multimillion-sellers. Last year, according to the survey firm Soundscan, just eighty-eight recordings--only.03 percent of the compact discs on the market-accounted for a quarter of all record sales. For the remaining 99.97 percent, Frith says, "copyright is really just a way of earning less than they would if they received a fee from the record company." Losing copyright would thus have surprisingly little direct financial impact on musicians. Instead, Frith says, the big loser would be the music industry, because today it "is entirely structured around contracts that control intellectual-property rights--control them rather ruthlessly, in fact."

If you'll read TA - Page 1, paragraph 5 (last sentence) - it states:...
Drama and Cannon have in recent years been paid by the same companies that paid Kilgo to help arrest them....
So no, according to the NY Times, it is most certainly not bull, or at least, not Slashdot hype. The RIAA('s member companies) actually did do this.